Chi Scars
by Ultrasaurus
Summary: Alex's 'pressure point' gives her trouble. Rated T because I'm not sure how graphic later chapters will be.
1. Chapter 1

Alex gripped the side of her desk, sweat beads forming on her forehead. What felt like a wave of thorns was rippling across her body. She reached up to touch the source of the pain, but doing so only triggered another wave. She grabbed a pen off her bedroom floor and bit down as hard as she could to prevent herself from screaming. The pain subsided, and she sat for a moment, resting her head on the chair in front of her. She wasn't able to rest for long, though, as she was forced to run to the bathroom and... vacate her stomach. She came back into the bedroom and sat on her bed, feeling much better. She lay back and stared at the sparkly ceiling for a few moments.

Finally, she looked up at Harper, who had been quietly observing this whole episode. Harper had a troubled look on her face. They maintained eye contact for several seconds before Harper spoke.

"Alex, what's going on? You used to be able to do magic all the time. Then you start getting this pain in your shoulder after doing spells, and now you can't even make a simple tray of brownies without halfway killing yourself"

Alex rolled her eyes. "If that was halfway killing myself, Harper, I'd have died at least three times by now."

"You know what I mean, Alex. As your best friend, I feel I have the right to know what's up."

Alex thought that one over. Yeah, her best friend did have a right to know. She sat up.

"Okay, Harper, you win. I'll tell you a story. The story of why my magic has been going down the tubes. Why I have a 'pressure point' in my right shoulder. Why Justin always has to help me get out of trouble."

She glanced up at a expectant Harper. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather just watch a movie?"


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Didn't publish anything last night. Broke the streak :( But after I wrote this last night, I deleted the bottom half and wrote it differently today. All for you! :D**

Harper got an annoyed look. "Come on, Alex, just tell me."

"Alright, well, here goes..."

"It all started 2 years ago, when I was about fourteen. My powers had just come in fully, so I had a degree of magical power I'd never possessed before. Of course, I started using this magic for selfish things: cheating on tests, pulling pranks, attracting boys..."

"I don't regret using magic like that. Magic is what makes me special. Like I say, they don't make fast swimmers do the doggy paddle. But I do regret what this dark magic got me into. You see, the morality of magic is like a sliding scale. One one side is pure good magic, which helps others. On the opposite side is purely evil magic, which hurts others. And then there's neutral magic, which affects no one but you."

"All living things, in any plane of existence, have a network of energy that flows through their physical body. Most animals have little or no control of this network. Humans have more control over the flow in their brains, but most humans cannot control much else without years of meditation and training. Wizards are set apart because we have finer control over our energy."

"So, this network goes by many names. Some call it your soul, some call it karma. A popular term nowadays is Chi, which is what I call it."

Harper interrupted "Okay, I get all this, but how does this relate to good and evil magic?"

"Do you remember the sliding scale? Everyone's Chi has morality, and everyone is born with a neutral flow. But when you practice magic of a certain type long enough, your Chi gets set in the patterns. So if you see somebody upset, and you use magic to cheer them up, you go from exactly neutral to slightly positive. If you do good magic long enough, the way your magical energy flows in your body is altered. You're able to perform powerful good magic that a neutral wizard can't, but severely limited in your dark magic. This works in reverse, too, and this is where it comes back to me."

Alex sighed. She had been tracing a pattern on her bedspread with her index finger. She collected her thoughts and continued.

"By the time I was fifteen, I had performed a huge amount of dark magic. It was small stuff, yeah, but every spell, every trick and every lie, were pulling me to the dark side. Eventually I realized that I had enough control that I could manipulate people's minds, which was a huge step up. Now I could do more than spy on a kids test paper, I could read the answers directly from his mind. And I could dream bigger, too. Why not force boys to like me? Force shop owners to give me free stuff? Force Max to clean my room?"

Harper had a thought "Wait. You could control other wizards? Couldn't they tell what was going on?"

"Depends. He he he. Depends." she laughed at the diaper reference.

Harper looked confused. "I don't get it. What's funny?"

"Nothing, inside joke. Anyway, it depends on how powerful the controller is, and how powerful the... the slave is. I don't like that word, but it fits. I could control Max because he has no control of his own powers. If I tried it on Justin, he'd probably shove my spell off easier than he could shove me off physically. By which I mean, he could actually do it."

"I was getting pretty good at dark magic, but nothing really _evil_. That is, until I met TJ Taylor. You remember him, that guy who's always like, _'I'll show you a purse'_ or whatever we're talking about? One day, we got into a magic fight during art class, using magic to propel and block paint blobs. I beat him pretty badly, and made a cool piece of art at the same time, so it worked out well. But..."

"After school, he tried to ambush me and get even. He hit me with a curse from behind. It was very strong, and very painful. I fell down and almost passed out, but luckily when he stood over me to watch the curse work, I broke his concentration with an ancient wizard self-defense technique known as _Kick-To-Nuts._"

"The real damage was done, though, because I had gotten a taste of how much power TJ had, and I wanted it. While he was still rolling around in pain, I demanded he tell me how a fifteen year old got so powerful. Surprisingly, he told me. And I didn't even have to use a spell on him!"

"He told me he had met a mysterious wizard who had offered to teach him and give him great power, in exchange for his absolute loyalty. TJ had agreed and now had all sorts of dark knowledge and powers. He told me that if I wanted to, I could become this wizard's disciple as well and get that kind of power."

"I wasn't really sure about the whole thing. It sounded like some sort of scam more than a real thing. Still, TJ was very good, and I did want some of that power, so I asked him to tell me more about this wizard. He told me that his master often hid in the shadows, so he didn't know to much about him or her physically. But he did know the organization they were part of. You see, the Inter-Dimensional Wizard's Counsel makes laws about magic, and for a long time there has been a ban on dark magic. A group of wizards who were quite good at the dark arts, and who thought that dark magic was completely safe and harmless in small amounts, formed a group to advocate legalizing certain black magic. But after many years of signing petitions and marches on the wizard capitol, they hadn't made any progress."

"So they decided to take a more direct role and teach trustworthy young wizards the dark arts. They would preserve the tradition of dark magic by providing instructions and resources such as books to those who they felt could make good use out of them. They called themselves the Higher Evil Resources Organization."

Harper spoke up. "Whoa, wait up. Do you realize that would be H.E.R.O. for short?"

"Yeahhhh" Alex exhaled, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. "They didn't really think that one through all the way. That might have something to do with why they didn't ever get much credibility. Back to the story. At first I wasn't sure about the whole idea, so I told TJ no. But over the next few weeks, I couldn't get the idea out of my head. It was just so tempting, to get tons of dark power with almost no work. I finally gave in to myself and told TJ I wanted to meet his dark master."

Harper was really getting into the story. "You met him? Or her? Were they human? Maybe some sort of monster?"

Alex laughed. "Slow down there, Harper. Listen, all this talking is making me thirsty. Let's go grab some b-.. soda, okay?"

"Okay"

As they walked from Alex's room to the kitchen, Harper couldn't help but notice Alex rubbing her shoulder.


	3. Chapter 3

After getting some soda, then some popcorn, then some more soda, then a few chocolate cookies, Alex was finally ready to continue.

"Ohhh..." she moaned, patting her stomach "Why do I always eat until I get sick?"

"Yeah" Harper said, furrowing her brow "and why are you the one who eats like a meat-lover on the Atkins diet, but I'm the, um, one with extra padding?"

Alex chuckled softly, holding her head in her hands. "Harper, I'm pretty sure God is playing some sort of practical joke, but it really didn't turn out the way he expected it would, and no one noticed it was a joke, so he's trying to play it off as normal until he can get his brother to fix things. Not that I would know anything about that. Now, where were we in the story?"

"Well, you had just explained what H.E.R.O. was, and TJ had invited you to become a member."

"Oh right! So, I decided to at least go to one of their meetings and check this thing out. TJ told me to meet him in one of the more unsavory parts of town to be taken to the local H.E.R.O. chapter's meeting place, which was in an alternate, hellish dimension. After we met up, he led me down a back alley and knocked on a large steel door. A slit opened up so a pair of eyes could look out, and a high-pitched, nasally voice demanded to know 'the password'."

"TJ answered with 'Peanuts'. The slit closed and within a few seconds the door opened. Walking into the room felt like jumping into a chilly swimming pool. It was very dark, but I could see cardboard boxes in stacks. We made our way towards a fold-up table surrounded by four plastic lawn chairs and lit by a single overhead light bulb. Four figures, draped in black hoodies and old jeans sat at the table, pouring over what looked like old magicians scrolls. They didn't notice us until TJ cleared his throat loudly. The hushed tones they had been conversing in ceased, and their shadowed faces turned to look at us. A tense five seconds passed as they looked us over. I was really scared they were going to turn into demons or something, and this whole alternate dimension thing was enough to make me rethink becoming evil. One of the figures, with flames decorating his hoodie, stood up. In a scratchy voice, he said 'Brother TJ, I only have one question for you...'. TJ just looked back with a smug look on his face."

"'What the hell is a female doing here?'"

"TJ held his hand out, and the now not-so-scary figure gave him a high five. The figures pulled back their hoods to reveal nothing more than a pack of acne-plagued nerds, and I now noticed the 'scrolls' they were reading were part of that nerdy game Justin plays, Dragons & Gargoyles. I was getting pretty ticked off by now, and was ready to kick TJ in the nuts if he had brought me here for nothing."

"'TJ...' I said, taking deep, calming breaths, 'This isn't an alternate, hellish dimension, is it?' He bit his lip 'Well, maybe dimension was the wrong word. It's my parent's basement. But hey, if you ever had to clean it, you'd agree it can be hellish... Listen, Alex, don't be mad and take your unholy revenge on me. These guys are all really good at black magic and know lots of other dark wizards, and this is a totally legitimate thing with other branches and stuff. The Wizard Defense Agency even recognizes H.E.R.O as magical criminals!' he said, proud of the distinction."

"This whole thing still seemed a little suspect to me, so I told him to prove he could do dark magic. At this point their leader, Eugene, spoke up and told me he could take me into an actual alternate plane of existence if I wanted proof of the power they could tap into. It seemed like a good way to get an idea of what I was dealing with, so I agreed. He explained that we would meditate to shift planes. Our bodies would stay here, empty, while we went to different places. Traveling to different planes was one of the main ways to get better at dark magic."

"TJ, Eugene, and I went into a room that was set up to facilitate meditation. It had light green shag carpeting, bamboo wallpaper, and no shortage of incense. We all sat on the floor and closed our eyes. Eugene told me how to focus with my breathing, and we all sat for a few minutes silently breathing."

"I was getting pretty bored, and nothing was happening. Then, out of nowhere, the floor disappeared. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn't. Not that I couldn't move them, they weren't there. I surmised that I had left my physical body at this point. It's hard to describe what it's like. You don't really fly around as an ethereal being. Really, you just think about where you want to be and you're there. I guess it's like your in a dream that you can control."

"I found TJ and Eugene. Another part of being ethereal: you don't need to talk. You can project your thoughts to others, which can be words, pictures, whatever. It's pretty cool. They guided me to the realm we wanted, a dark-based version of our universe. When we entered it, we instantly materialized. Well, sort of. We looked like our regular selves, if we were normally made out of glowing fog. I did notice that TJ and Eugene had a purplish tint to them, a side-effect of dark Chi."

"The realm itself was pretty creepy. The sky, which they told me was perpetually dark, was filled with red stars. There was no regular ground, just islands of barren rock floating in the air. We drifted down and landed on an island which had a little bit of grass and a leafless tree. A big, dragon/bird thing flew by, and we followed it. It flew to a very large island, about the size of a football field, and went down a tunnel. The tunnel led to a network of caves. And it was inside these caves that the real fun began..."

Duh duh DUH!!!


End file.
